← Why Starting World War 3 In The Middle East Is A Really Bad IdeaBenghazi Jihadists Directly Tied To Obama Supported Syrian RebelsPosted on August 31, 2013 by Tim Brown

Sept 11 2012 BenghaziWe all know what’s going to happen in Syria. Barack Obama is attempting to do a little dance to talk about “being concerned” and “considering carefully” what to do, but in the end we all know what his decision will be, in spite of the fact that there is no international coalition to strike Syria, nor is their constitutional authority to do so. However, the only people who benefit from a U.S. strike in Syria are the Obama supported Syrian rebels, who are a part of al-Qaeda and directly tied to the very al-Qaeda jihadists (Ansar al-Sharia) that attacked the diplomatic mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, leaving 4 Americans dead and dozens wounded.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

U.S. intelligence agencies earlier this month uncovered new evidence that al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Benghazi are training foreign jihadists to fight with Syria’s Islamist rebels, according to U.S. officials.

Ansar al-Sharia, the al Qaeda-affiliated militia that U.S. officials say orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound and a CIA facility in Benghazi, is running several training camps for jihadists in Benghazi and nearby Darnah, another port city further east, said officials who discussed some details of the camps on condition of anonymity.

The officials said the terror training camps have been in operation since at least May and are part of a network that funnels foreign fighters to Syrian rebel groups, including the Al-Nusra Front, the most organized of the Islamist rebel groups fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus.

The officials said the jihadist training is a clear indication that Ansar al-Sharia continues to conduct terrorist activities and is linked to jihadists in both Syria and North Africa.

Is this one of those “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” scenarios? Haven’t we learned by now that doesn’t work out well? I guess not.

Though Britain says that a strike on Syria is justified on humanitarian grounds, the British Parliament voted down an endorsement of military action against Syria on Thursday.Russia and China also pushed away from a United Nations Security Council session which was discussing the draft resolution on Syria proposed by Great Britain. To top it off, a bi-partisan letter was sent from 116 congressmen to Barack Obama admonishing him to honor the Constitution and get congressional approval in order to strike Syria has gone out.

Is anyone else seeing a problem with this out of control criminal in the White House? It appears that Barack Obama is defying not only the Constitution of the United States, but even the international community. Obama is willing to stand against all opposition except Islamic jihadists.

Tim Brown is the Editor of Freedom Outpost and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.

I don't believe for one second that there were not capable military in the area that could have gotten there in time. Of course no one new in advance there would be ample time but military personnel could have been dispatched immediately upon calls for help.

It is also clear that Stevens was specifically picked to be sent to his post by you guessed it: Clinton.

And she left him there to die for her political career.

And we should trust her or Brock who will put their political reputation above lives? Did anyone think Reagan or either Bush would even dream of that?

Adm. Mike Mullen, vice chairman of the accountability review board for the Benghazi investigation, said he thought a Hillary Rodham Clinton aide "would be a weak witness." (Associated Press)

The leaders of the State Department’s Benghazi probe defended their inquiry into the 2012 attack, but they acknowledged to Congress on Thursday that their mission was limited in scope and faced questions over why they gave Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton an advance look at their findings.

Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, vice chairman of the accountability review board, also acknowledged that he had warned Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff not to send a particular official to Congress because he thought “she would be a weak witness” who might have hurt the State Department’s stance.

Republicans said those moves called into question the motives of the review, which was supposed to be an independent look at what went wrong in the attack and how to prevent others.

“If this is so independent, why are you giving the State Department a heads-up about a witness coming in front of this committee?” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican. He said the warning came just days after Adm. Mullen had been appointed to the review board.

Adm. Mullen testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee alongside former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, chairman of the review board.

Also appearing before the committee were the parents of two of the Americans who died in the attacks. They said the government failed them and has not been truthful about the events surrounding the assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission, falsely blaming the attack on reaction to a YouTube video critical of Islam.

“I was told a few things, and they were all lies,” said Pat Smith, mother of State Department officer Sean Smith. She said President Obama and his top aides came up to her at the casket ceremony when her son’s body was returned to the U.S.

“Every one of them came up to me, gave me a big hug, and I asked them what happened. Please tell me. And every one of them said it was the video. And we all know that it wasn’t the video. Even at that time they knew it wasn’t the video. So they all lied to me,” she said.

Also Thursday, Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the oversight committee, said he has signed subpoenas to demand testimony from two witnesses who he said talked to the review board but whom the State Department has refused to allow to talk to Congress.

“The State Department has not made those people available, has played hide-and-go-seek and is now hiding behind a thinly veiled statement that there is a criminal investigation,” Mr. Issa said.

The attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi and follow-up attack on an annex building left four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, dead.

The incident became a major controversy for Mr. Obama and his team, who first blamed a mob responding to the anti-Islam video before later acknowledging that the attack was a coordinated terrorist assault.

The review board was created to investigate the security lapses that led to the attack and the lack of response from the government during the two assaults, which spanned eight hours.

Mr. Pickering defended the conclusions, which identified a handful of department employees who failed at their jobs, and made recommendations about security precautions.

“I am aware that no report will ever be perfect, but I am proud of this one, which has been seen by many as clear, cogent and very hard-hitting, as it should be,” Mr. Pickering said. “New information is always welcome. I feel that this report is still on the mark, free of cover-up and political tilt, and will personally welcome anything new which sheds light on what happened and that helps us to protect American lives and property in the future.”

Adm. Mullen said board members interviewed everyone they thought was necessary, more than 100 people, to draw their conclusions.

He said the list of those they interviewed didn’t include Mrs. Clinton, who appointed four out of the review board’s five members, nor did they interview Tom Donilon, national security adviser at the time, because they saw no evidence that either of them made key decisions related to the attack.

“We followed the precepts that Adm. Mullen has just outlined for you, not to go for the people who didn’t make the decisions, but to go, following the will of Congress, to the people who made the decisions,” Mr. Pickering said. “And indeed, we went to the people who reviewed those decisions.”

Republicans weren’t satisfied.

“If the secretary wasn’t involved, I must be on another planet,” said Rep. John L. Mica, Florida Republican.

At another point Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, questioned why no military rescue mission had been mounted, saying the U.S. didn’t even ask for assistance from NATO allies who were close to the scene.

“I actually commanded NATO forces, and the likelihood that NATO could respond in a situation like that was absolutely zero,” Adm. Mullen fired back.

Democrats said Republican accusations of a whitewash were out of bounds.

“Based on all of the evidence obtained by this committee, this Benghazi review was one of the most comprehensive ARB reviews ever conducted,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “I’ve seen no evidence, none whatsoever, to support these reckless accusations.”

Ahead of the hearing, committee Democrats released a report concluding that there was never a “stand-down” order issued to Americans at the main embassy in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, who might have mounted a rescue mission. That contradicts a claim many Republicans have made.

But Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, one of the former SEALs who was killed in the attack, was not convinced.

“We need to ask the people that were there, not rely upon hearsay evidence as to whether or not there was an order to stand down,” he told the committee. “Ambassador Stevens was alive for a substantial period of time after he made that initial distress call. It’s very possible that there would have been no loss of life if that first order to stand down had not been given. We need to find that out.”

The only real accountability for the Benghazi scandal will have to come in 2016.

Reading through the competing partisan reports and listening to the congressional testimony of various officials this week, it seems fair to say that no actual crimes were committed (though you never know what you don’t know).

There were, in at least a figurative sense, criminal lapses in judgment by senior officials. Many of those lapses are recounted in the Accountability Review Board report. It found “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department” that “resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.”

Translation: U.S. officials were caught by surprise by a terrorist attack on 9/11 in a country where our ambassador had repeatedly warned his superiors — including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — that security was grossly inadequate. That ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was vindicated in a pyrrhic sense when he was murdered by well-organized terrorists.

Clinton picked four of the five members of the “independent” board, and they were kind enough to show her a draft before they released it to Congress. The ARB assigned all meaningful blame to some mid-level officials. ARB members declined to interview Clinton because, according to testimony by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Michael Mullen (the chairman and vice chairman of the ARB) on Thursday, they determined at the outset that it wouldn’t be necessary. None of the people who were interviewed for the report were under oath.

For those who followed the still-unfolding scandal at the IRS, this might be significant. Initially, IRS official Lois Lerner tried to pin all of the blame on some low-level employees in Cincinnati. When employees were questioned by congressional investigators — away from their bosses and under oath — evidence was found to help prove Lerner’s account a well-orchestrated lie.

Congressional Republicans would like to get relevant witnesses to testify under oath, but they claim that the State Department and CIA are blocking that. CNN has reported that many potential CIA witnesses have been subjected to “frequent, even monthly” lie-detector tests to discourage them from leaking information. One insider told CNN: “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.” Said another: “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well” if you talk to anyone about what happened.

That’s all very ominous, and I’m at a loss as to why it’s outrageous for Congress to try to get to the bottom of what happened. But to listen to defenders of the administration and a lot of allegedly neutral journalists, this basic exercise in congressional oversight is a deranged and entirely fabricated partisan witch hunt. It’s an odd charge given that the only obvious fabrication in the whole affair was the relentless effort to cast the attack that killed four Americans as a spontaneous reaction to an obscure and shoddy YouTube video.

But we probably know what happened. In the midst of a hard-fought presidential election, the administration, and specifically the president, was caught embarrassingly flat-footed by a terrorist attack. And even when it knew the attack was still going on — without any possible knowledge of when it was going to end — it still failed to send any help. The ARB establishes that much.

In their testimony Thursday, Pickering and Mullen softened that criticism by noting that the U.S. military can’t be expected to defend every diplomatic outpost everywhere in the world all of the time. Fair enough. But maybe it’s not unreasonable for the military to be ready for an attack in, say, the Middle East on Septempber 11? Particularly in a country where officials knew security was a huge problem?

At the time, the Obama campaign had been touting its success in the War on Terror. The last thing it wanted less than 60 days before the election was to lose that issue. So, afraid of the political fallout, the White House and the State Department circled the wagons.

Hillary Clinton is a master of the passive-aggressive art of dragging out investigations until the press and public lose interest and spinners can use abracadabra phrases like “it’s all old news,” “let’s just move on,” and, most famously, “what difference does it make?”

The irony in this case is that it’s precisely that tactic that has now turned a political problem for Obama into a political problem for Clinton. And unfortunately, the only real accountability we can hope for on Benghazi will come when she runs for president herself.

I heard some reports yesterday, including on Bret Baier, that a Congressional committee with secured hearings under its belt, has concluded that that in point of fact there were no assets in place that could have made a difference.

HUH?

This is quite contrary to what we have been hearing and covering here , , ,

I heard some reports yesterday, including on Bret Baier, that a Congressional committee with secured hearings under its belt, has concluded that that in point of fact there were no assets in place that could have made a difference.

HUH?

This is quite contrary to what we have been hearing and covering here , , ,

Anyone that buys that, pm me. I have some beach property in Arizona for sale.....

I don't believe that either. Wasn't there a time period of multiple hours?

And that doesn't excuse those who were in a position to respond for at least not sending help even if it got there late.

You send the help and hope they get there in time.

The crowd there was left to fend for their own. And the whole affair was covered up and a complete phony story made up as an excuse just before an election and to cover glamour gild Clinton for her run.

The military people don't get promoted for outing superiors. They fall in line (I think). No?

The silence of the mainstream media is so telling. The Republicans must get their act together and coordinated to respond and fight this propaganda war. They are getting trashed.

MARC: Just in case this somehow disappears down the road, here is the content:

The following script is from "Benghazi" which aired on Oct. 27, 2013. The correspondent is Lara Logan. Max McClellan, producer.60 Minutes OvertimeVoices from the Benghazi investigation »

When Chris Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of September 11th last year, it was only the sixth time that the United States had lost an ambassador to its enemies. The events of that night have been overshadowed by misinformation, confusion and intense partisanship. But for those who lived through it, there's nothing confusing about what happened, and they share a sense of profound frustration because they say they saw it coming.

Tonight, you will hear for the first time from a security officer who witnessed the attack. He calls himself, Morgan Jones, a pseudonym he's using for his own safety. A former British soldier, he's been helping to keep U.S. diplomats and military leaders safe for the last decade. On a night he describes as sheer hell, Morgan Jones snuck into a Benghazi hospital that was under the control of al Qaeda terrorists, desperate to find out if one of his close friends from the U.S. Special Mission was the American he'd been told was there.

Morgan Jones: I was dreading seeing who it was, you know? It didn't take long to get to the room. And I could see in through the glass. And I didn't even have to go into the room to see who it was. I knew who it was immediately.

Lara Logan: Who was it?

Morgan Jones: It was the ambassador, dead. Yeah, shocking.

Morgan Jones said he'd never felt so angry in his life. Only hours earlier, Amb. Chris Stevens had sought him out, concerned about the security at the U.S. Special Mission Compound where Morgan was in charge of the Libyan guard force.

Now, the ambassador was dead and the U.S. compound was engulfed in flames and overrun by dozens of heavily armed fighters.

Although the attack began here, the more organized assault unfolded about a mile across the city at a top secret CIA facility known as the Annex. It lasted more than seven hours and took four American lives.

Contrary to the White House's public statements, which were still being made a full week later, it's now well established that the Americans were attacked by al Qaeda in a well-planned assault.

Five months before that night, Morgan Jones first arrived in Benghazi, in eastern Libya about 400 miles from the capital, Tripoli.

He thought this would be an easy assignment compared to Afghanistan and Iraq. But on his first drive through Benghazi, he noticed the black flags of al Qaeda flying openly in the streets and he grew concerned about the guard forces as soon as he pulled up to the U.S. compound.

Morgan Jones: There was nobody there that we could see. And then we realized they were all inside drinking tea, laughing and joking.

Lara Logan: What did you think?

Morgan Jones: Instantly I thought we're going to have to get rid of all these guys.

Morgan Jones' job was training the unarmed guards who manned the compound's gates. A second Libyan force -- an armed militia hired by the State Department -- was supposed to defend the compound in the event of an attack. Morgan had nothing to do with the militia, but they worried him so much, he could not keep quiet.

Morgan Jones: I was saying, "These guys are no good. You need to-- you need to get 'em out of here."

Lara Logan: You also kept saying, "If this place is attacked these guys are not going to stand and fight?"

Morgan Jones: Yeah. I used to say it all the time. Yeah, in the end I got quite bored of hearing my own voice saying it.

Andy Wood: We had one option: "Leave Benghazi or you will be killed."

Green Beret Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andy Wood, was one of the top American security officials in Libya. Based in Tripoli, he met with Amb. Stevens every day.

The last time he went to Benghazi was in June, just three months before the attack. While he was there, al Qaeda tried to assassinate the British ambassador. Wood says, to him, it came as no surprise because al Qaeda -- using a familiar tactic -- had stated their intent in an online posting, saying they would attack the Red Cross, the British and then the Americans in Benghazi.

===================================

Lara Logan: And you watched as they--

Andy Wood: As they did each one of those.

Lara Logan: --attacked the Red Cross and the British mission. And the only ones left--

Andy Wood: Were us. They made good on two out of the three promises. It was a matter of time till they captured the third one.

Lara Logan: And Washington was aware of that?

Andy Wood: They knew we monitored it. We included that in our reports to both State Department and DOD.

Andy Wood told us he raised his concerns directly with Amb. Stevens three months before the U.S. compound was overrun.

Andy Wood: I made it known in a country team meeting, "You are gonna get attacked. You are gonna get attacked in Benghazi. It's gonna happen. You need to change your security profile."

Lara Logan: Shut down--

Andy Wood: Shut down--

Lara Logan: --the special mission--

Andy Wood: --"Shut down operations. Move out temporarily. Ch-- or change locations within the city. Do something to break up the profile because you are being targeted. They are-- they are-- they are watching you. The attack cycle is such that they're in the final planning stages."

Lara Logan: Wait a minute, you said, "They're in the final planning stages of an attack on the American mission in Benghazi"?

Andy Wood: It was apparent to me that that was the case. Reading, reading all these other, ah, attacks that were occurring, I could see what they were staging up to, it was, it was obvious.

We have learned the U.S. already knew that this man, senior al Qaeda leader Abu Anas al-Libi was in Libya, tasked by the head of al Qaeda to establish a clandestine terrorist network inside the country. Al-Libi was already wanted for his role in bombing two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Greg Hicks: It was a frightening piece of information.

Lara Logan: Because it meant what?

Greg Hicks: It raised the stakes, changed the game.

Greg Hicks, who testified before Congress earlier this year, was Amb. Stevens' deputy based in Tripoli - a 22-year veteran of the Foreign Service with an impeccable reputation.

Lara Logan: And in that environment you were asking for more security assets and you were not getting them?

Greg Hicks: That's right.

Lara Logan: Did you fight that?

Greg Hicks: I was in the process of trying to frame a third request but it was not allowed to go forward.

Lara Logan: So why didn't you get the help that you needed and that you asked for?

Greg Hicks: I really, really don't know. I in fact would like to know that, the answer to that question.

In the months prior to the attack, Amb. Stevens approved a series of detailed cables to Washington, specifically mentioning, among other things, "the al Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings".

When the attack began on the evening of September 11, Amb. Stevens immediately called Greg Hicks, who was back in Tripoli.

Greg Hicks: Ambassador said that the consulate's under attack. And then the line cut.

Lara Logan: Do you remember the sound of his voice?

Greg Hicks: Oh yeah, it's indelibly imprinted on my mind.

Lara Logan: How did he sound?

Greg Hicks: He sounded frightened.

In Benghazi, Morgan Jones, who was at his apartment about 15 minutes away, got a frantic call from one of his Libyan guards.

Morgan Jones: I could hear gunshots. And I-- and he said, "There's-- there's men coming into the mission." His voice, he was, he was scared, you could tell he was really scared and he was running, I could tell he was running.

His first thought was for his American friends, the State Department agents who were pinned down inside the compound, and he couldn't believe it when one of them answered his phone.

Morgan Jones: I said, "What's going on?" He said, "We're getting attacked." And I said, "How many?" And he said, "They're all over the compound." And I felt shocked, I didn't know what to say. And-- I said, "Well, just keep fighting. I'm on my way."

Morgan's guards told him the armed Libyan militia that was supposed to defend the compound had fled, just as Morgan had predicted. His guards -- unarmed and terrified -- sounded the alarm, but they were instantly overwhelmed by the attackers.

Morgan Jones: They said, "We're here to kill Americans, not Libyans," so they'd give them a good beating, pistol whip them, beat them with their rifles and let them go.

Lara Logan: We're here to kill Americans.

Morgan Jones: That's what they said, yeah.

Lara Logan: Not Libyans.

Morgan Jones: Yeah.

About 30 minutes into the attack, a quick reaction force from the CIA Annex ignored orders to wait and raced to the compound, at times running and shooting their way through the streets just to get there. Inside the compound, they repelled a force of as many as 60 armed terrorists and managed to save five American lives and recover the body of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. They were forced to fight their way out before they could find the ambassador.

====================================

Not long afterwards, Morgan Jones scaled the 12-foot high wall of the compound that was still overrun with al Qaeda fighters.

Morgan Jones: One guy saw me. He just shouted. I couldn't believe that he'd seen me 'cause it was so dark. He started walking towards me.

Lara Logan: And as he was coming closer?

Morgan Jones: As I got closer, I just hit him with the butt of the rifle in the face.

Lara Logan: And?

Morgan Jones: Oh, he went down, yeah.

Lara Logan: He dropped?

Morgan Jones: Yeah, like-- like a stone.

Lara Logan: With his face smashed in?

Morgan Jones: Yeah.

Lara Logan: And no one saw you do it?

Morgan Jones: No.

Lara Logan: Or heard it?

Morgan Jones: No, there was too much noise.

The same force that had gone to the compound was now defending the CIA Annex. Hours later, they were joined by a small team of Americans from Tripoli. From defensive positions on these rooftops, the Americans fought back a professional enemy. In a final wave of intense fighting just after 5 a.m., the attackers unleashed a barrage of mortars. Three of them slammed into this roof, killing former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Lara Logan: They hit that roof three times.

Andy Wood: They, they hit those roofs three times.

Lara Logan: In the dark.

Andy Wood: Yea, that's getting the basketball through the hoop over your shoulder.

Lara Logan: What does it take to pull off an attack like that?

Andy Wood: Coordination, planning, training, experienced personnel. They practice those things. They knew what they were doing. That was a-- that was a well-executed attack.

We have learned there were two Delta Force operators who fought at the Annex and they've since been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross -- two of the military's highest honors. The Americans who rushed to help that night went without asking for permission and the lingering question is why no larger military response ever crossed the border into Libya -- something Greg Hicks realized wasn't going to happen just an hour into the attack.

Lara Logan: You have this conversation with the defense attache. You ask him what military assets are on their way. And he says--

Greg Hicks: Effectively, they're not. And I-- for a moment, I just felt lost. I just couldn't believe the answer. And then I made the call to the Annex chief, and I told him, "Listen, you've gotta tell those guys there may not be any help coming."

Lara Logan: That's a tough thing to understand. Why?

Greg Hicks: It just is. We--, for us, for the people that go out onto the edge, to represent our country, we believe that if we get in trouble, they're coming to get us. That our back is covered. To hear that it's not, it's a terrible, terrible experience.

The U.S. government today acknowledges the Americans at the U.S. compound in Benghazi were not adequately protected. And says those who carried out the attack are still being hunted down.

Just a few weeks ago, Abu Anas al-Libi was captured for his role in the Africa bombings and the U.S. is still investigating what part he may have played in Benghazi. We've learned that this man, Sufian bin Qumu, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and long-time al Qaeda operative, was one of the lead planners along with Faraj al-Chalabi, whose ties to Osama bin Laden go back more than 15 years. He's believed to have carried documents from the compound to the head of al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The morning after the attack, Morgan Jones went back to the compound one last time to document the scene. He took these photos which he gave to the FBI and has published in a book he has written. After all this time, he told us he's still haunted by a conversation he had with Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, a week before the attack.

Morgan Jones: Yeah, he was worried. He wasn't happy with the security.

Lara Logan: And you didn't tell him all your worries?

Morgan Jones: No. No, didn't want to--

Lara Logan: Why not?

Morgan Jones: I didn't want to worry him anymore, you know? He's a nice guy. I sort of promised him he'd be OK.

Lara Logan: You think about that?

Morgan Jones: Every day, yeah.

The U.S. pulled out of Benghazi and al Qaeda has grown in power across Libya. When a member of our team went to the U.S. compound earlier this month, he found remnants of the Americans' final frantic moments still scattered on the ground. Among them Amb. Stevens' official schedule for Sept.12, 2012, a day he didn't live to see.

In a broad exercise of the senatorial privilege of temporarily stopping a nomination, known as a “hold,” Sen. Lindsey Graham announced this morning that he will not allow any Obama administration nominations to proceed.until he is told the names of those he calls the “Benghazi survivors.”

In a broad exercise of the senatorial privilege of temporarily stopping a nomination, known as a “hold,” Sen. Lindsey Graham announced this morning that he will not allow any Obama administration nominations to proceed.until he is told the names of those he calls the “Benghazi survivors.”

Good for him. Politically, we may see Graham as a wimp but he is also a tough prosecutor and is facing a primary challenge in a state more conservative than he is. Nice that they don't leave all the heavy lifting for Ted Cruz.

A DEM should have done this! Is it partisan to want to know what happened to Americans 14 months later?

When U.S. commandos grabbed a former al Qaeda operative in Tripoli this month, American forces were just hours away from potentially launching a more dangerous covert raid to capture a militia figure facing charges in the deadly Benghazi terror attack, U.S. officials tell CNN.

U.S. special operations forces were ready, if ordered, to enter Benghazi and capture Ahmed Abu Khattalah, a leading figure in the Ansar Al-Sharia militia. But the mission never materialized.

The United States believes Ansar Al-Sharia was behind the September 2012 armed assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans

Masked from public view, two of the U.S. military’s elite special operations commandos have been awarded medals for bravery for a mission that further undercuts the Obama administration’s original story about the Benghazi tragedy.

For months, administration officials have claimed no special operations forces were dispatched from outside Libya to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012, al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex because none was within range. The Pentagon, under intense public criticism for not coming to the aid of besieged Americans, published an official timeline in November that carefully danced around the issue.

It said time and distance prevented any commandos outside Libya from reaching a CIA compound under attack. The timeline disclosed that a reinforcement flight 400 miles away in Tripoli contained two “DoD personnel” but did not describe who they were. Later, the official State Department report on Benghazi said they were “two U.S. military personnel” — but provided no other details. It made no mention of special operations forces. But sources directly familiar with the attack tell The Washington Times that a unit of eight special operators — mostly Delta Force and Green Beret members — were in Tripoli the night of the attack, on a counterterrorism mission that involved capturing weapons and wanted terrorists from the streets and helping train Libyan forces.

When word of the Benghazi attack surfaced, two members of that military unit volunteered to be dispatched along with five private security contractors on a hastily arranged flight from Tripoli to rescue Americans in danger, the sources said, speaking only on the condition of anonymity because the special operations forces’ existence inside Libya was secret.

The two special operations forces arrived in time to engage in the final, ferocious firefight between the terrorists and Americans holed up in the CIA annex near the ill-fated diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the sources added.

The two special operators were awarded medals for valor for helping repel a complex attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens, another American diplomat and two former Navy SEALs, but spared many more potential casualties.

“Yes, we had special forces in Tripoli, and two in fact did volunteer and engaged heroically in the efforts to save Americans,” one source told The Times. “The others were asked to stay behind to help protect Tripoli in case there was a coordinated attack on our main embassy.

“The remaining [special operations forces] were ready to dispatch the next morning, but by that time American personnel had been evacuated to the airport, local militias had provided additional security and it was determined there was no need for them to be dispatched at that point,” the source added.

Pressed why the Pentagon and administration officials did not publicly acknowledge the special operations forces’ contribution that tragic night, the sources said officials decided that their anti-terror work inside Libya was sensitive and closely guarded. In addition, U.S. officials did not have a Status of Forces Agreement in place that would have authorized the troops’ presence, the sources said.

The history of the Benghazi attack is infamous in part for what the White House and Pentagon did not do: no warplanes and no rescue troops from outside Libya.

The revelation that some special operations forces did make it to Benghazi the night of the attack is the latest to undermine a carefully crafted story line put out by the president and his aides in the weeks leading into the 2012 election. The administration has since acknowledged that parts of that story line were misleading.

“On the one hand, it is an indictment of the lack of contingency planning by both CIA and DoD, especially given the rising threat profiles in Libya that were well understood — and appropriately reported back to D.C. by agency reps on the ground,” said retired Army Col. Ken Allard. “So why weren’t there more than just two Delta Force guys to send? Above all: Where were the air and naval resources that should have routinely been included in any contingency planning worthy of the name?”

The original account misled the public about the role of al Qaeda. The White House falsely asserted that the attacks arose from a spontaneous riot spurred by an anti-Islam video, when the intelligence community had evidence almost immediately that the assault was planned by al Qaeda-linked terrorists.

The administration has blamed editing of “talking points” for the misleading accounts, the most famous of which was given on national television by Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time, five days after the attack.

But a second thread of the administration’s story line was that no U.S. special operations forces were deployed to Benghazi because none was within range to arrive during the eight-hour onslaught.

“The bottom line is this: that we were not dealing with a prolonged or continuous assault which could have been brought to an end by a U.S. military response,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told Congress this year. “Very simply, although we had forces deployed to the region, time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

Mr. Panetta, who has since left office, eventually acknowledged that two soldiers were involved in the firefight, but he offered little detail.

“The quickest response option available was a Tripoli-based security team that was located at the embassy in Tripoli.,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February. “And to their credit, within hours, this [seven]-man team, including two U.S. military personnel, chartered a private airplane, deployed to Benghazi. Within 15 minutes of arriving at the annex facility, they came under attack by mortar and rocket-propelled grenades.”

What Mr. Panetta left unspoken in public, however, was why those troops were in Tripoli and who else accompanied them.

At the time of the al Qaeda attacks, the military was setting up a terrorist-hunting unit in Tripoli that included U.S. Special Operations Command’s super-secret Delta Force and Green Berets, the sources say.

Gregory Hicks, who was deputy chief of station in Tripoli, sent the reinforcements in conjunction with the CIA. On a night when Mr. Panetta decided he did not have enough information to commit troops, Mr. Hicks decided he did.

Delta Force is nation’s premier counterterrorism unit, along with the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, controlled by Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. Delta has been working with the CIA to nab wanted terrorists in Libya.

More than a year after the Benghazi attack, on Oct. 5, Delta soldiers in Tripoli captured fugitive al Qaeda terrorist Abu Anas al Libi, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

CBS’ “60 Minutes” reported Sunday that the annex was defended by two Delta soldiers. The Washington Times confirmed the information last week and learned that they were part of the small reinforcement flight from Tripoli. They were awarded medals for valor. The CIA also has bestowed medals to its employees who defended the mission and annex.

The charter flight proved ill-fated. After terrorists stormed the U.S. mission in Benghazi at 9:45 p.m. local time, killing Stevens and communications aide Sean Smith, surviving diplomats and State Department security personnel made a mad dash. In armored vehicles, they arrived just after midnight at the annex commanded by a retired Army officer turned CIA operative. A rescue team from the annex also brought back survivors from the mission.

The Hicks-ordered flight arrived in Benghazi in time to help at 1:15 a.m. — but they could not get various Libyan militias to provide transportation to the annex.

The annex inhabitants had plenty of weapons to hold off a direct assault, like the one that breached and burned the U.S. mission. Huddled there was a mix of CIA officers and security personnel, such as former SEAL Tyrone Woods, and employees of Britain’s Blue Mountain personal security team.

The Tripoli team finally arrived at about 5 a.m. Sept. 12. Exactly what the two Delta soldiers did is not contained in any public account. But it is known that ex-SEAL Glen Doherty, who was on the flight, joined Woods on the roof to man machine guns. Within minutes, five mortar rounds hit on or near the annex. Three hit the roof, killing both former SEALs and badly wounding State Department security officer David Ubben.

The State Department’s official account said men went to the roof and carried the dead and wounded defenders below.

A source said annex defenders killed at least 20 terrorists during an on-and-off firefight that lasted nearly eight hours. The terrorists who planned the mission attack also knew of the annex and were able to place mortars within striking range.

Doug,"Honesty" in government is low on the list of many Americans political imports.

Lying has become a no big deal - unless it affects an individual's bottom line.

It is more than ever all about the money.

To me honesty is even just as importance as competence.

That is the one thing I respected about Jimmy Carter. At least I believed he was honest.

The left certainly doesn't care about honesty. Look at the Clintons. Look at Brocks deceptions. 40% will defend them no matter what. Another 10 - 15 % jump on board as soon as they get the money train offered to them.

I certainly don't know how we can have a government that is not honest. No matter what they say, no matter when, one never knows if it is the truth or not. I agree. How can anyone not think that is a problem?

It suggests to me many people in general are dishonest. It also proves what I learned. When it comes to money forget about all else. Family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and the rest.

That is the reason Dems have lost some support. Not the lying. Just the fact that more people than expected are having to pay more. That's it. All about the freaking money.

CCP, You are right. The Benghazi lie is so much like the Obamacare lie. People knew it was a lie then. People know now. People tolerate it. Clarence Page (liberal columnist) said it aloud (about the keep-your-plan lie), it was a "political lie", meaning people expect that and he needed to do it to get bill passed and to get re-elected. The Benghazi lies were to get reelected, covering up a big hole in their foreign policy schtick. If 'we' want him re-elected, then it is okay. The IRS targeting was only about taking down opponents, that is still okay. But the keep-your-plan lie, as you say, now involves money out of our pockets. And the Benghazi lies involve deaths of people serving our country. The line has been crossed, even for the people with almost no political principles. The other factor is the media. After blowing it so badly and with reelection safely accomplished, they have a some credibility to re-establish. Now they are curious of what they previously ignored, even helped to cover up.

I still cringe at the image of Candy Crowley conspiring to sweep the Benghazi coverup under the carpet. That is when answers should have been forced out of this administration. Mr. President, where were you? Who ordered the stand down? Who approved the video excuse? What was the mission? Why wasn't security beefed up? A foreign policy debate in a Presidential election, and none of it asked! Instead she shot down the challenger with a blatant falsehood.

Show the Video, Mr. President! They knew what was going on in Benghazi.

President Obama knew. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew. The heads of our military and intelligence services knew. They knew our brave former SEALs and diplomats were pinned down by an enemy attack. They knew sovereign U.S. territory was being brazenly violated by armed militias.

And. They. Did. Nothing.

Show us that video, Mr. President. Let us see the attack you neglected to stop. Let us see what our Department of Defense knew and when it knew it. Do it. Stand up and be accountable. Stop hiding behind your spokesmen, the State Department, and the military leaders you hold in utter contempt. Just once.

But we know you won’t because then everyone would see what you really think of America’s fighting forces. You won’t because it will reveal what those of us at Special Operations Speaks have known all along – that you are entirely unfit to command our Military.

You won’t because it will show that our leaders knew beyond any doubt we were being attacked – not by an angry mob over some obscure video but by a coordinated fighting force with a specific mission and sufficient command and control to destroy our facility and kill our people in Benghazi.

At SOS, we are former Special Operations soldiers. We know how these fights begin … and end. We know that in combat men are isolated from their support, and sometimes lost. We have never, though, witnessed the willful withholding of support from Americans in mortal distress. We have never seen a commander-in-chief wander from his command post, go to bed and then casually fly away next day to tend to his campaign ambitions.

We’ll never stop raising this issue... Barack Obama is our President. Hillary Clinton wants to be. They are both unfit – by virtue of their actions on this night alone – to lead our troops. When the red phone rang that night, no one answered. Unacceptable. We are going to make this egregious and shameful violation of the American warrior ethos public until everyone understands it.

But we need your help. We are a small organization with a tremendously complex and difficult mission – to ensure Americans understand the true character of those who now lead us and would aspire to do so in the future. Help us today. Your contribution of 100.00 or 200.00 or 500.00 will enable us to keep the heat on this most unfit presidents and his former Secretary of State and get us the answers the American people deserve.

This was an event of unprecedented consequences. No longer can our fighting men and women assume we will not leave them behind. They have to figure we might.

The State Department has belatedly released dozens of photos of the aftermath of last year’s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi after The Washington Times inquired about the authenticity of photographs it received from a Welsh security contractor assigned to the doomed American outpost in eastern Libya.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, had requested all photos and videos of the besieged diplomatic mission under the Freedom of Information Act in December and February, and the State Department released only seven photographs in June.

PHOTOS: Shocking new photos reveal devastation of Benghazi attack

But this week, after weeks of inquiries by The Times about photos it received, the State Department released a trove of photographs showing buildings and vehicles ablaze during the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Other photos show ransacked offices, burned-out cars and Arabic graffiti scrawled on walls.

The State Department said it had forwarded the photographs to the FBI for its investigation into the attack and submitted them to the accountability review board, the independent panel that conducted the State Department’s mandatory probe of the Benghazi incident and events leading up to it. The department also shared the photographs with members of Congress looking into the Obama administration’s response to the attack.

Judicial Watch was incredulous over the sudden release of never-before-published photographs and criticized the State Department for withholding requested videos of the attack and its aftermath.

“The new photos reveal a level of total devastation thoroughly belying Obama’s original cover story that the carnage was perpetrated by a bunch of random malcontents upset over an unpleasant video,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Wednesday on the group’s website. “The fact that we’ve had to wait nearly a year and file a federal lawsuit for basic documentary material of the attack shows that this administration is still in cover-up mode. And now the Obama administration brings the Benghazi stonewall to a whole new level by withholding video of the attack using frivolous arguments such as ‘privacy.’”

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, expressed outrage over the State Department’s delay in providing materials requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

“It’s inexcusable that members of Congress and the press who want to learn the truth about what happened in Benghazi have had to use FOIA requests to obtain answers. Absent the creation of a House select committee that will hold public hearings and have cross-jurisdictional subpoena authority, I don’t think the American people will ever learn the truth,” said Mr. Wolf, who has been calling for a Watergate-style committee to investigate Benghazi.

“To date, there have been too few answers and absolutely no accountability,” he said. “Just what exactly were the State Department and CIA doing in Benghazi that has led the government to go to such great lengths to obstruct requests for information?”

Days after the terrorist attack on the diplomatic compound and a nearby CIA annex, Obama administration officials publicly blamed the assault on spontaneous protests over an anti-Muslim video produced in the U.S. But intelligence personnel determined soon after the attack that it was carried out by heavily armed, trained militants conducting a well-planned assault.

Republicans have accused the administration of covering up the militants’ involvement because it would have contradicted a theme in President Obama’s re-election campaign — that al Qaeda had been decimated.

The photos obtained by The Times were verified as authentic by the State Department this week, and they offer mute testimony to the events of that night and lend urgency to questions still swirling about the U.S. mission and the Obama administration’s response to the attack and its aftermath. The Times previously reported that U.S. special operations forces were in Libya at the time of the attack and tried to rescue Americans at the CIA annex, contrary to administration statements. Two of those troops have received awards for heroism for their actions.

The Times received the photos from Dylan Davies, a specialist with the British security firm Blue Mountain Group, which was contracted by the State Department to train Libyans how to protect the diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

Using the pseudonym “Morgan Jones,” Mr. Davies was interviewed last month on CBS’ “60 Minutes” about the attack. His account of scaling a wall at the diplomatic compound and confronting a terrorist during the assault has been widely discredited.

But the photographs he took the day after the attack — and those taken during the onslaught by a local guard — have been submitted by the State Department to investigators looking into the debacle. Many of those photos are the same as those recently released by the State Department.

“The Blue Mountain Group had been under contract to provide local guard services at our compound in Benghazi,” said Alec Gerlach, a spokesman for the State Department. “As a contractor of the State Department, the Blue Mountain Group provided information, including photographs and an incident report, to department officials with whom they had been in regular contact throughout their contract agreement. These and other appropriate materials were provided to the FBI to assist in their criminal investigation.”

In an interview with The Times, Mr. Davies confirmed with documentation that he had been in contact with FBI and State Department officials in September and October 2012.

Since the recent publication of his book about the Benghazi attack — “The Embassy House,” co-written with Damien Lewis — Mr. Davies’ credibility has been widely questioned.

“The account in my book is consistent with what I gave to the FBI and U.S. authorities about what happened in Benghazi,” he told The Times, which has led an investigation to verify and confirm what he turned over to the State Department and the FBI.

An unsigned incident report, written in the first person, has been attributed to Mr. Davies and counters his claims about the night of the attack on the diplomatic mission.

Mr. Davies has denied writing or submitting an incident report. In all of his face-to-face meetings with U.S. officials, he said, he was never recorded or asked to sign any document.

According to a State Department official, the evidence that Mr. Davies turned over to the officials was included in the 25,000 pages of documents given to congressional committees, the FBI and the accountability review board. However, none of those materials has identified Mr. Davies as their source.

Yes, absent an American government account, we'll go with the photo. GM has been right on this, where is the autopsy report - it's been 15 months! Is it secret, do we need a Warren commission?

Who ordered the stand-down? How? When? Why?

Who came up with the youtube video story? Who said run with it? Why?

There was no protest. A blatant lie. There was no report at the time or in post-attack interviews of a protest. The lies about the protest and the video were put forward at least dozens different times by the highest officials intending only to obfuscate the truth. So what is the truth, start to finish?! We know where George Bush was when he learned of the 9/11/2001 attacks. They made a full length movie on it. Where was Pres. Obama? Where was Sec. Clinton? We paid for the cameras that filmed the attacks. Did they watch in real time. Did they have second thoughts on ordering the stand down. Two of the dead were defying stand down orders. Did they consider court-martial when they learned this? Was the Pres. working on his Vegas speech during the attack? Did he go to bed while Americans were under attack? Did he sleep well?

No Qaeda Link Seen in Benghazi Attack; Interviews Show Militia and Insults to Islam Fueled Assault

The September 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was led by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was accelerated in part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.

A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both challenges now hang over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict.

The attack also suggests that, as the threats from local militants around the region have multiplied, an intensive focus on combating Al Qaeda may distract from safeguarding American interests.

A boyish-looking American diplomat was meeting for the first time with the Islamist leaders of eastern Libya’s most formidable militias.

It was Sept. 9, 2012. Gathered on folding chairs in a banquet hall by the Mediterranean, the Libyans warned of rising threats against Americans from extremists in Benghazi. One militia leader, with a long beard and mismatched military fatigues, mentioned time in exile in Afghanistan. An American guard discreetly touched his gun.

“Since Benghazi isn’t safe, it is better for you to leave now,” Mohamed al-Gharabi, the leader of the Rafallah al-Sehati Brigade, later recalled telling the Americans. “I specifically told the Americans myself that we hoped that they would leave Benghazi as soon as possible.”

Yet as the militiamen snacked on Twinkie-style cakes with their American guests, they also gushed about their gratitude for President Obama’s support in their uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. They emphasized that they wanted to build a partnership with the United States, especially in the form of more investment. They specifically asked for Benghazi outlets of McDonald’s and KFC.

The diplomat, David McFarland, a former congressional aide who had never before met with a Libyan militia leader, left feeling agitated, according to colleagues. But the meeting did not shake his faith in the prospects for deeper involvement in Libya. Two days later, he summarized the meeting in a cable to Washington, describing a mixed message from the militia leaders.

Despite “growing problems with security,” he wrote, the fighters wanted the United States to become more engaged “by ‘pressuring’ American businesses to invest in Benghazi.”

The cable, dated Sept. 11, 2012, was sent over the name of Mr. McFarland’s boss, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Later that day, Mr. Stevens was dead, killed with three other Americans in Benghazi in the most significant attack on United States property in 11 years, since Sept. 11, 2001.The Diplomatic Mission on Sept. 11, 2012

Four Americans died in attacks on a diplomatic mission and a C.I.A. compound in Benghazi.

As the attacks begin, there are seven Americans at the mission, including five armed diplomatic security officers; the information officer, Sean Smith; and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Both Mr. Smith and Ambassador Stevens die in the attack.

The cable was a last token of months of American misunderstandings and misperceptions about Libya and especially Benghazi, many fostered by shadows of the earlier Sept. 11 attack. The United States waded deeply into post-Qaddafi Libya, hoping to build a beachhead against extremists, especially Al Qaeda. It believed it could draw a bright line between friends and enemies in Libya. But it ultimately lost its ambassador in an attack that involved both avowed opponents of the West and fighters belonging to militias that the Americans had taken for allies.

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both are challenges now hanging over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict.

The attack also suggests that, as the threats from local militants around the region have multiplied, an intensive focus on combating Al Qaeda may distract from safeguarding American interests.

In this case, a central figure in the attack was an eccentric, malcontent militia leader, Ahmed Abu Khattala, according to numerous Libyans present at the time. American officials briefed on the American criminal investigation into the killings call him a prime suspect. Mr. Abu Khattala declared openly and often that he placed the United States not far behind Colonel Qaddafi on his list of infidel enemies. But he had no known affiliations with terrorist groups, and he had escaped scrutiny from the 20-person C.I.A. station in Benghazi that was set up to monitor the local situation.

Mr. Abu Khattala, who denies participating in the attack, was firmly embedded in the network of Benghazi militias before and afterward. Many other Islamist leaders consider him an erratic extremist. But he was never more than a step removed from the most influential commanders who dominated Benghazi and who befriended the Americans. They were his neighbors, his fellow inmates and his comrades on the front lines in the fight against Colonel Qaddafi.

To this day, some militia leaders offer alibis for Mr. Abu Khattala. All resist quiet American pressure to turn him over to face prosecution. Last spring, one of Libya’s most influential militia leaders sought to make him a kind of local judge.

Fifteen months after Mr. Stevens’s death, the question of responsibility remains a searing issue in Washington, framed by two contradictory story lines.

One has it that the video, which was posted on YouTube, inspired spontaneous street protests that got out of hand. This version, based on early intelligence reports, was initially offered publicly by Susan E. Rice, who is now Mr. Obama’s national security adviser.

The other, favored by Republicans, holds that Mr. Stevens died in a carefully planned assault by Al Qaeda to mark the anniversary of its strike on the United States 11 years before. Republicans have accused the Obama administration of covering up evidence of Al Qaeda’s role to avoid undermining the president’s claim that the group has been decimated, in part because of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The investigation by The Times shows that the reality in Benghazi was different, and murkier, than either of those story lines suggests. Benghazi was not infiltrated by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or without warning signs.

Mr. Abu Khattala had become well known in Benghazi for his role in the killing of a rebel general, and then for declaring that his fellow Islamists were insufficiently committed to theocracy. He made no secret of his readiness to use violence against Western interests. One of his allies, the leader of Benghazi’s most overtly anti-Western militia, Ansar al-Shariah, boasted a few months before the attack that his fighters could “flatten” the American Mission. Surveillance of the American compound appears to have been underway at least 12 hours before the assault started.

The violence, though, also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.The C.I.A. Annex

A 20-person team from the Central Intelligence Agency is in the compound known as the Annex, about a half-mile from the mission, where the security officers Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty are later killed.

The Benghazi-based C.I.A. team had briefed Mr. McFarland and Mr. Stevens as recently as the day before the attack. But the American intelligence efforts in Libya concentrated on the agendas of the biggest militia leaders and the handful of Libyans with suspected ties to Al Qaeda, several officials who received the briefings said. Like virtually all briefings over that period, the one that day made no mention of Mr. Abu Khattala, Ansar al-Shariah or the video ridiculing Islam, even though Egyptian satellite television networks popular in Benghazi were already spewing outrage against it.

Members of the local militia groups that the Americans called on for help proved unreliable, even hostile. The fixation on Al Qaeda might have distracted experts from more imminent threats. Those now look like intelligence failures.

More broadly, Mr. Stevens, like his bosses in Washington, believed that the United States could turn a critical mass of the fighters it helped oust Colonel Qaddafi into reliable friends. He died trying.